Today, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employs tens of thousands airport screeners. A screener's job is to check baggage for security threats prior to boarding a plane. To check whether a piece of baggage is a security threat, the baggage is run through a detection device, such as a scanner, and with the aid of the scanner, the screener flags suspicious pieces of baggage that appear to contain an object that is a security threat. If the baggage is flagged as suspicious, the screener searches to the contents of the piece of baggage by hand to determine whether an object that is a security threat is present in the piece of baggage.
There are a number of issues with the approach of using the two-level of approach of (1) using a baggage scanner to flag suspicious pieces of baggage, and then (2) having a screener search the flagged pieces of baggage. One issue is that currently-utilized scanners may falsely flag many pieces of baggage as suspicious, i.e. resulting in many false positives. False positives, in turn, may cause security screeners to waste time inspecting the baggage incorrectly flagged as suspicious, which may in turn result in a significant waste of money. In addition to incorrectly falsely flagging many pieces of baggage as suspicious, the scanner may also fail to flag significant numbers of pieces of baggage as suspicious when those bags do, in fact, contain objects that are a security risk.
Even more, a screener's job may be both difficult and monotonous. This difficulty and monotonousness may increase the chance that a piece of baggage that is a security threat gets through the screening process without being detected.
The drawings are for illustrating example embodiments, and the inventions are not limited to the arrangements and instrumentality shown in the drawings.